'I am one of the Fukushima fifty': One of the men who risked their lives to prevent a catastrophe shares his story
They displayed a bravery few can comprehend, yet very little is known about the men who stayed behind to save Japan’s stricken nuclear plant. In a rare interview, David McNeill meets Atsufumi Yoshizawa, who was at work on 11 March 2011 when disaster struck
It was, recalls Atsufumi Yoshizawa, a suicide mission: volunteering to return to a dangerously radioactive nuclear power plant on the verge of tipping out of control.
As he said goodbye to his colleagues they saluted him, like soldiers in battle. The wartime analogies were hard to avoid: in the international media he was a kamikaze, a samurai or simply one of the heroic Fukushima 50. The descriptions still embarrass him. “I’m not a hero,” he says. “I was just trying to do my job.”
A stoic, soft-spoken man dressed in the blue utility suit of his embattled employer Tokyo Electric Power Co., (Tepco) Mr Yoshizawa still finds it hard to dredge up memories of fighting to stop catastrophe at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.
RELIGION
Malaysia tells followers of Filipino sultan to give up now
Malaysia has issued what appears to be a last warning a Filipino sultan's followers, who are holed up in an island town within the Malaysian segment of the island of Borneo. Fourteen people died in a shootout on Friday.
Malaysian police said that two fo their security personnel and 12 followers of the little-known sltan of Sulu were killed in the firefight.
The Filipinos landed on the Malaysian segment of Borneo island - which is divided into three - and have since been surrounded by a Malaysian police and military cordon.
El Paso Vice: When Drug Cops Become Criminals
By Takis Würger
The war on drugs has become so intense that the line between criminality and law-enforcement has blurred. Salvador Martinez, an undercover officer at the Mexican border, ended up in prison after he went too far.
Salvador Martinez began his career with 150 grams of heroin. He met the dealer in the Texan city of El Paso in a diner with large windows during the lunch rush. More witnesses reduce the risk of execution, Martinez calculated. Both of them drank iced tea, he recalls. Martinez wanted dark heroin, La Negra, as the Mexicans say.
"Around the corner," Martinez said.
He had learned to remain vague, never saying where the money was hidden or giving precise information about amounts and people.
"We will make the delivery at Tiffany's Bar," the dealer said.
UN ducks responsibility for deadly error in Haiti
March 2, 2013
The UN's troops were the source of a cholera epidemic that killed 8000, then it abandoned the victims, writes Jonathan Katz.
INTERNATIONAL affairs can be complicated, but sometimes a case comes along that is so simple it is almost absurd. In 2010, the United Nations made a horrendous mistake that, so far, has claimed more than 8000 lives. Its officials tried to cover it up. When the evidence came out anyway, lawyers for victims' families petitioned the UN to end the crisis, pay damages and apologise. For a year and a half, the world's leading humanitarian organisation said nothing. Then, last week, it threw out the case, saying, ''The claims are not receivable.''
The place was Haiti. The mistake: a killer combination of cholera and gross negligence. The UN's peacekeeping mission had been in the country since 2004, when it was authorised to protect an interim government installed after a coup. Six years later the peacekeepers were still there. While rotating troops into Haiti following the disastrous 2010 earthquake, the UN neglected to adequately screen a contingent of soldiers coming from Nepal, where there was an active cholera outbreak.
From the outbreak's first days, the staff of an organisation dedicated to establishing respect for the rule of law chose to lie.
Army, rebel clashes in East DRC leaves 57 casualties
Fifty-seven people have been killed or wounded when a mortar shell slammed into a hospital in East Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), says the UN.
"On February 27 the Saint Benoit Hospital was reportedly hit by a mortar shell resulting in up to 57 casualties, including patients and staff," UN deputy spokesperson Eduardo del Buey said on Friday, citing UN peacekeepers in the area.
He did not specify whether the 57 were killed or wounded, adding that "the UN mission is in the process of confirming the number and status of the victims."
He said peacekeepers from Monusco – the UN Organisation Stabilisation Mission in the DR Congo – were helping to evacuate the wounded and carrying out military helicopter overflights.
Shark kills number 100 million annually, research says
The most accurate assessment to date of the impact of commercial fishing on sharks suggests around 100 million are being killed each year.
The researchers say that this rate of exploitation is far too high, especially for a species which reproduces later in life.
The major factor driving the trade is the ongoing demand for shark fins for soup in Chinese communities.
The report has been published in the Journal Marine Policy.
Researchers admit that establishing the true level of global shark fishing is extremely difficult, as the quality of the data is poor. Many sharks that are caught have their fins removed at sea with the body dumped overboard. These fish are often not included in official reports.
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